Portable Consoles I’ve Bought This Year

I’ve bought three portable consoles this year: The GP2X, the PSP, and the NDS Lite. A while back I made an entry about the PSP vs the GP2x. Well, since then, I’ve purchased a Nintendo DS as well.

Here’s my impression of the three:

GP2X

I bought this from Lik-sang, which recently went out of business because of Sony. Pretty much, right out of the box, this was a piece of garbage. The manual was something that seemed printed from a cheap laserjet. It was stapled together. It didn’t have the gloss of the PSP and looked dull. When turned on, it took like 15+ seconds to boot. There’s no sleep mode like the PSP/NDS. There’s no commercial games, just cheap open source which are always buggy and crash the GP2X often. No wireless technology like the PSP/NDS. Directional pad very uncomfortable. Interface laggy. Out of the box, it was practically non-functional because it was so buggy that you have to upgrade the firmware immediately. Now mind you, that this was a few months ago, so I’m sure there’s been more development from the makers and the community. However, the PSP beats it hands down as far as homebrew, which is suppose to be its strength. There’s more momentum in the PSP homebrew community, because more people own it. What’s good, and probably the only good thing (the reason why I bought it), is that the makers encourage homebrew/custom apps, aside from the piece of shit that is Sony, who block it on every firmware.

Here’s a pic:

PSP

Better graphics than the GP2X and NDS, but the games suck. I don’t understand why Sony/Game makers don’t make better games. Like 90% of the games stink. No innovation like the NDS. True that you can play MP3s and Videos on it, but I have my iPod for that. And I don’t want to carry this clunky thing as a portable media device. It’s sleek and sexy, sure, but its power and functionality isn’t being used. The UMD discs are worthless. Sony won’t let you play the movies in UMD format on anything else but the PSP. As far as homebrew, Sony restricts it. THAT would be the only good selling point as the PSP shines for homebrews. However, to run it, you need old versions of the firmware. However, if you run older versions of the firmware, you won’t be able to play recent PSP games. At least it’s got wireless, like the NDS.

Here’s a pic:

Nintendo DS Lite

– I just got this and I love it. The games are awesome. Sure, it’s not a swiss army knife of multimedia like the PSP, but the games are outstanding – and at the end, isn’t that what it’s all about? About having fun? It also contains a stylus for touching the screen. It’s got wireless like the PSP. There’s a homebrew community, but I’m not familiar with it yet. The graphics aren’t as great as the PSP, but there’s better innovation as far as add-ons. Out of the box, it doesn’t play MP3s, or watch videos, or view pictures like the PSP or GP2X, but again, I have my iPod or Morotola Q for that.